


contronym

by Huzuzu470



Series: in the margins [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Pre-Return to Shiganshina Arc (Shingeki no Kyojin), post-Clash of the Titans Arc, questionably unhappy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 23:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30029511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huzuzu470/pseuds/Huzuzu470
Summary: “i made a necessary sacrifice.” his voice is remarkably steady for a man who’s just lost not only a limb, but his own ability to fight. to lead them into battle. “what would you rather i’d have done?”levi’s answer is simple, comes out in a sour hiss. “stayed in one damn piece.”
Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Erwin Smith, one-sided Levi/Eren Yeager - Relationship
Series: in the margins [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2097780
Kudos: 25





	contronym

**Author's Note:**

> so... it's been busy. 
> 
> (v short notes at the end)

when levi first returns to the underground after his initial expedition outside the walls, it’s to pack up the remainder of their things from the two-room hovel he’d spent the last few years of his life in. he’d collected all the stuff he wouldn’t need anymore, had packed isabel’s old straw dolls into a box, from when she had been much, much younger, and had carried them as well as whatever clothes he could find of theirs to the local brothel. farlan had been insistent on keeping them long after she’d stopped playing with them, well into her teens, had always prided himself on how well they’d come out.

“here,” levi had said, had held them out to one of the women who greeted him at the back entrance. he knew there were two illegitimate girls who lived here. “these are for your younger residents.” the words sounded hollow, even to him. she’d knocked the box straight out of his hands, had fixed him with a disapproving scowl that even he wasn’t sure he could match. 

“take your charity elsewhere, boy. soldiers aren’t welcome here,” she’d warned him. one of the girls had been crouched behind her skirt, fingers thin, frailly clinging to the fabric of it as she’d slammed the door in his face. 

levi had not cried. his eyes had trailed just a second too long on one of the doll’s rough-hewn clothes as it soaked in the mud, had considered putting them back into the crate at least, that maybe the girls would stumble across the gift themselves. but the straw was damp now, and that alone was enough to make him dismiss the thought as quickly as it came. he’d left them there in the dirt to rot, and returned to the surface, instead. to his bunk and his uniform, to the duty of being a soldier. 

he’d never been one for sentimentality anyways, he tells himself. 

so when hanji is carried in on a stretcher that afternoon, and erwin comes back soaked in blood and missing an arm three hours after her, draped over the back of his horse like the dishevelled shadow of the man who’d left that morning, levi does not cry.

“what the fuck,” he’d spat instead, dragged horse and rider alike away by the reins before anyone could stop him. he’d led it back to the stable and slid erwin off the animal, had almost buckled under the weight in the process — somehow the fact that erwin is probably close to 200 pounds had slipped his mind along the way.

two of the other men follow him through, start helping levi hoist the commander onto their shoulders. frankly, levi doesn’t give enough of a shit to figure out which of the stupid new recruits they are, grunts a quiet _thanks_ and just keeps moving. he staggers under the weight, and even though erwin’s hardly conscious at this point, — had barely been awake enough to stay atop his horse, — levi can feel the shake of his lungs as he _laughs_ as they struggle to lift him.

“what’s so funny, old man? you think this is some kind of joke?”

erwin doesn’t get the chance to answer before there’s a rapt knock on the frame of the stable door. levi looks up and clicks his tongue at the disturbance, a frown creasing his brow. 

eren’s hand is still hovering over the wood as he licks his lips slowly, the words faint. “captain —” he says, and levi meets it with a gruff noise halfway between a sigh and a growl. he doesn’t need the titan brat on his ass right now. “ — can i help at all? with the commander?”

grey irises flick to the green-eyed gaze fixed so firmly on him, still the same stubborn, wild eyes of the selfish child he’d met in court hardly a month before, and something clicks in levi’s head: eren has some kind of guilt to alleviate. he feels responsible for the injury, likely not without good reason either. it’s the only thing that would explain why the kid would try and offer his assistance.

eren has never really bothered to stand out to levi as an _exceptional_ soldier. his skill is far lower than the way he talks it up, he lacks the quiet grace and tenacity of a leader, and he’s not only nearsighted, but short-tempered as well. all of that mixed together, and levi finds he has a hard time being in the same room for too long without getting a migraine. if the kid hadn’t had simple, dumb luck on his side, he’d have been dead in the struggle for trost. yet somehow he’s here now, titan wonder-child standing in front of him offering to help carry erwin’s practically comatose body up the stairs. levi almost laughs.

and typically, levi _would_ have — the nasty brat was responsible for whatever had driven erwin to go rushing headfirst into titan territory, after all. he’s tempted to sneer and ask if eren doesn’t think he’s already done enough.

surprisingly though, reckless anger is not one of the luxuries that levi is guaranteed with his job. it takes him a few completely silent seconds of staring at eren to bring his own protectiveness back in line, stomp down his impulsivity, and actually think. eren needs to keep his spirits up. erwin believes in him, says that he’s humanity’s last hope, and levi believes in erwin’s judgement enough to know he won’t risk breaking the stupid kid’s heart. 

and, the stairs to his office would go by faster with two on each end. they wouldn’t need to wait for a stretcher.

“fine,” he grunts. eren’s face brightens. “get over here. get his good arm, i’ll lift from the right side. you two — on legs. keep them lower than his shoulders.”

he doesn’t give eren more than half a second to adjust the weight before they start walking to the door that goes from the stables up the stairs. there’s a long stretch of hallway from there to erwin’s office, the shiny brass nameplate waiting for them. erwin groans softly as the four of them lay him on top of the sheets, and the two nameless soldiers make for the doorway.

“get hanji and a medic,” levi barks at their backs, then falters. “no, shit, she’s recovering as well right now, — _fuck._ just get a medic team, then. i’ll stay with him until they arrive.”

he turns around, and eren is still standing between him and the bed, arms stiff at his sides.

“captain, i —”

levi clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, wastes absolutely no time grabbing eren by the jacket and dragging him back into the hallway roughly.

“didn’t you hear my orders?” levi growls, fist still knotted in eren’s jacket. he can feel the 15 year-old stiffen under his grip, eyes wide. 

“i want to help. you.” eren stumbles over his words as the fall clumsily out of his mouth, legs fidgeting while levi’s hold tightens on his jacket. “if you’ll let me.”

“then get someone for your commander. or — better yet, get arlert to meet me at my office so i can get a reliable recap of what happened,” he drawls, sends him stumbling backwards with a shove and slams the door in eren’s face.

the quiet of the office is deafening in its wake, blood still pumping against his eardrums as he catches his breath. there’s a dull ache from where he’s overstrained his ankle. across the room, he hears the shuffle of fabric as erwin tries to prop himself up a little more.

“you’re always so harsh with him, levi,” he groans from the mattress. the knot of muscle twitches under the torn, bloody sleeve, his remaining hand wrapping curiously over it. years before, levi had one of his molars pulled. his tongue had run over the empty hole where the tooth had been for weeks after, trying to adjust to the difference. he imagines erwin’s feelings are somewhat similar.

levi rolls his eyes. “like you’re one to criticize. you got your damn arm bitten off because of some impulsive — no, more likely in some _desperate_ bid to save him, didn’t you?”

he only needs to see the way erwin’s already fluttering eyelids fall closed to know that he’s right. 

“idiot,” he mutters softly. erwin’s eyes open again to stare vacantly at the ceiling. 

“i made a necessary sacrifice.” his voice is remarkably steady for a man who’s just lost not only a limb, but his own ability to fight. to lead them into battle. “what would you rather i’d have done?”

levi’s answer is simple, comes out in a sour hiss. “stayed in one damn piece.” 

there’s a first-aid kit under the desk that levi’s used before, when he’d patched up lesser wounds, the office chair grating harsh against the stone as he drags it to the bedside and seats himself, right where the knob of erwin’s shoulder becomes nothing. whenever they’d come back from previous missions, both of them usually bore some new scrape or gash. ten years of that, and levi is fairly certain he knows every dip and curve of the scars across erwin’s body as well as his own by now. once, erwin had fractured his leg landing wrong, and had been completely unable to walk for weeks, even with help. he’d stayed off-duty for a total of four months. 

but it’s never been anything that levi had had no idea where to start with. not like this. 

“that stupid kid isn’t what will carry us past the walls, erwin. _you_ are.”

erwin’s teeth grit in pain again. they’ve known each other long enough that he’s aware that levi always means every word that comes out of his mouth with erwin, and yet something — ever since they’d won the case for custody of eren, erwin has seemed to regain some of the wide-eyed youth that the last the corps had taken out of him over the years, gets up sometimes in the middle of the night to scratch out new ideas and formations as they come to him. of course part of that is from the fire that eren seems to have lit under almost every soldier, levi knows that the inspiration isn’t out of nowhere, but he also knows that no one except erwin has the tactical skill to execute the ideas just so. 

erwin sighs, frustrated, head falling back on the pillow. “i’m just his enabler. we need eren.”

“that’s what you think,” levi mutters back. he pops open the latch on the case, and tacks on, “even before shadis hung that rock on your neck, you were a self-sacrificing bastard.”

he can feel as his bitter expression dissipates almost instantly when he moves erwin’s hand aside and peels back the torn fabric of his clothes though, inhales through his teeth at the sight of bone. it takes an agonizing cluster of seconds for him to acclimate his eyes to the rawness, swallow around the lump in his throat.

blue eyes settle apologetically on his. erwin knows, reads him that easy. 

“levi, i —”

“shut up.” he doesn’t allow himself the luxury of considering what erwin had been about to say. “i need you to focus and stay awake for me."

the field bandages are thick and rough. levi undoes them gently, watches where erwin’s face contorts so as to avoid causing him too much pain. he leaves the bottommost layer in place though, discards everything else and wraps the new, clean cloth on top of that.

“idiot,” he mutters under his breath again. erwin chuckles at that, eyes still barely open, glassy and fixed straight ahead. “you’re bleeding all over your sheets.” he’ll have to wash them, when he gets a chance, the torn sleeves of erwin’s shirt and jacket catching his attention hardly a moment later. and pick up replacements for those, too.

he sighs, touches the bandages gingerly and watches as erwin winces in pain, is about to open his mouth and say something when the door creaks open behind him.

“captain,” the medic says. she almost sounds surprised to find him there. levi's eyes bore into hers, and she swallows. “it's alright, we’ll take care of him from here. there's no need for you to waste your time waiting, he has a high likelihood of survival after antibiotics.”

the dull echo of wood pushing back on stone floor is the only noise beyond erwin’s ragged breathing as levi stands. the medic is probably half a foot taller than him, and he yanks her down to level her eyes with his face.

“you call me the second anything changes. if he worsens, if he gets better, — if he so much as takes a _shit_ that i don’t know about, you report to me. understood?”

“with all due respect, captain —” she says, her brow furrowing, but erwin interrupts with a long sigh before she can finish.

“levi, let go of corporal teufel’s shirt and let her perform her duties.” it’s not technically an order, but he listens anyways, shakes his hand as though to dust it off as he does.

he glares at her, but his mouth snaps shut, catches the door as it falls closed behind the second medic and leaves, stomps off to his own office to file a report. nile and the other military pigs are going to have an absolute _field_ day with this, he thinks quietly, but _someone_ is going to have to send _something_ in.

— 

erwin falls into a coma less than an hour later. his condition doesn’t particularly worsen before he does, and his vitals are reportedly stable, but levi still decides he’s going pretty much straight to check on him after dinner. just to be sure.

he does make one short detour to his own office, to pick up some work and the new jacket he’d requested be delivered there, and finds eren standing outside the door.

“yeager,” he says. he’s surprised to find him, but his tone stays serious and even, betrays nothing of his internal thoughts. everyone else was supposed to be celebrating the return home, or so he had thought.

eren’s hand is braced as though he’d been about to knock just before levi turned the corner, his lip between his teeth as though focusing very hard on what he might be about to say. levi’s appearance seems to have startled him.

“captain!” his arms fall into a reactive salute, the word almost shouted. “i was looking for you.” 

weird, levi thinks. his nose scrunches up before he can stop it.

“well, you found me,” he deadpans back. he fits the key from his pocket into the lock and turns, door falling open to reveal the room within. it’s immaculate, because of course it is, because he’d scrubbed until his fingers went red and numb, and then some. because levi has had nothing to do except sit around and stress himself the fuck out since that morning, when erwin had gone racing out the barracks with the rest of the corps in tow, claiming that levi was still too injured to be of use. _bastard_.

there’s a stack of papers from earlier piled on the desk, and he shuffles through them, trying to find the ones he’d dropped there before heading down to the mess hall. “what do you want, cadet?”

both eren’s salute and his face drop at the word _cadet_. levi grabs the new, folded jacket off his desk, along with the folder containing the report he’d drafted earlier that evening, and leaves without bothering to take anything else. frankly, he can come back later in the night if he has to, and he doesn’t particularly want to stick around very long right now if it means eren’s going to be on his ass the whole time. the lock clicks back into place.

eren, on the other hand, seems to have completely forgotten what he’d wanted to say, a nervous sheen of sweat across his forehead, cheeks off-colour. 

“i, uh…” he starts, but the thought trails off into a series of half-formed mumbling. 

“oi.” levi snaps his fingers in front of the younger scout’s face, and it seems to jolt him back into the present. “i haven’t gotten all night. spit it out.” he takes a step closer, raises a hand with the intention of snapping again, or maybe just shaking the dumb brat’s collar until he comes out of it, and eren actually _flinches_.

that makes levi raise an eyebrow again. 

the kid has the same stiff-legged posture and stilted laughs every time they’ve interacted. he’s no different now than he usually is, and yet his wide eyes stare back at levi like he’s expecting to be —

oh.

“eren,” levi says, slow and steady, lowers his hand. he can see him swallow around the lump in his throat, adam's apple bobbing. “i’m not going to beat the shit out of you again. and even if i were, that was just for the courtroom, eren.”

he knows full well that using his name twice is a manipulation tactic, erwin had taught him as much when he’d started taking levi to inner city dinners. but, weeks after the court date, after dozens of titans and _constant_ brushes with death later, and _levi_ turns out to still be the one thing that scares this kid? he hadn’t been expecting that, to say the least, had considered that maybe eren would hate him for it, but not this. hadn’t he supposedly had both his arms chopped off at the elbow earlier that afternoon?

“i know,” eren says, and levi shrugs. it doesn’t seem like he believes it, though. he’s still shaking, but levi doesn’t have time to spend trying to wipe his snivelly little nose for him. 

“what are you here for, yeager?”

eren freezes up again, stops shivering long enough that levi wonders if maybe the kid isn’t actually as terrified of him as he looks, but rather that maybe levi had just said something to set him off. he paws the ground wordlessly, and then — 

“everyone’s downstairs drinking and — i guess just glad to be home,” eren blurts, finally. levi sighs. “and you’re — not. i mean, i just, —.” his fingers knot into the fabric of his pants nervously as he stares at the ground in front of levi, raises his eyes finally to meet his gaze. “i don’t really know — i just wanted to ask why.”

levi blinks slowly. “the commander fell into a coma earlier this evening. none of the senior corps members can allow themselves to be off-duty, for now. not until he wakes up.” he grunts, and then tacks on, a bit blunt, “besides, i’ve been here this entire time. i’ve got nothing to be celebrating.”

“oh,” eren says, and his chest seems to deflate just a little bit, hand still clenched in a fist at his side. “so you’re… here.”

“for now,” levi concedes, nods in agreement just to placate him. he tucks the jacket under his arm, taps his foot a little impatiently. “but you should be with your squad members. it’s been a while since the legion has had a chance to relax and have a good time.” 

and, probably an exponentially better time than levi will be having at that, drafting letters from the base of erwin’s bed.

eren seems to recoil at the idea though. “with all due respect, captain, i wanted to see if you were free. i — don’t know most of the other soldiers who are downstairs.”

a moment of silence passes, mainly because levi doesn’t actually know what to say to that.

“and you think you know me?” he asks finally, settling deliberately on the words, his eyebrow quirked upwards as though waiting for an answer. “you think you’d rather _talk_ with me?” the second part he throws in mostly to rub eren’s nose in how childish it sounds, frowning. 

“not — not really, no.” the words are slow, hesitantly chosen, and now it’s levi’s turn to flinch backwards. something unsettling turns over in his gut. “but i’d like to, captain.”

he almost laughs again, catches himself early enough to turn it into a scoff instead. “if you don’t pick your words more carefully, kid, i might think you have a crush on me.”

silence. eren squirms a bit and folds his arms over his chest, looks away with his lips pressed into a thin, panicky line. 

the kid has a fucking crush on him. 

levi holds in a groan. of all the people in the legion, why _him_ , levi wonders? it’s not like eren and he have a particularly close relationship — hell, they’d just established that eren was still _afraid_ of him. contextually, it would make a _lot_ more sense to levi if the kid started going sweet on erwin, for fuck’s sake. erwin is the one who he catches eren staring up at in admiration, clinging on to his every word like he might die. levi just kicks the brat back down when he’s told to.

on the other hand, a crush would explain — well, a _lot_ of other things, to be fair. mostly the way that eren, even in his most bullheaded moments, is still willing to submit unquestioningly to levi’s orders. he fidgets with the jacket under his arm. that’s probably what eren had come to confess to him in the privacy of levi’s office, before he’d blown that plan out of the water and surprised him in the hall.

“captain, i — can i stay with you?” he asks. the questions are not as cautious anymore, an unusual sort of confidence to him as eren takes a step closer. levi doesn’t like the taste it leaves in his mouth, but he steels himself in place, refusing to move backwards again. his hand covers the jacket protectively. “in your office?”

there’s not a single second of hesitation between eren’s question and the answer it’s met with.

“no,” levi says. “you’re dismissed. go back downstairs and join your comrades.” 

he grunts again, holds the eye contact between them until eren’s whole face is flushed and he looks away. eren will likely grow out of it, in time. and levi, in the meanwhile, will have nothing to do with it. his job is to keep eren in line, nothing more. 

something that he’d buried down deep in his chest uncurls a little, and the memory of how petra had asked him if he’d ever consider marriage someday bubbles up to the surface. it had only been a few months after she’d been appointed as a part of his official squadron, and levi had shut that down just as quickly. 

_“i’m your superior officer,”_ he’d said firmly, and that had been the end of it. he hadn’t seen it as being necessary to break her heart any further; she’d probably understood that that would be his answer when she’d brought it up. but her eyes hadn’t been so different from how eren’s looked now, plucky and almost a little too hopeful.

eren is more complicated. levi can’t afford to break him at all — not if he doesn’t want to get skinned for it by erwin if he wakes up.

he blinks, puzzled, corrects the thought before it has time to twist and rot in his skull. _when_ he wakes up, levi reminds himself.

eren’s chest puffs out again in some kind of protest, but the words take another second to form. by time he starts to say something, mouth open like a fish, levi’s already cut him off.

“you best listen to an order when it’s given,” he glares. makes sure there’s an ever so subtle edge on the words as they leave his mouth. “i need to tend to your commander’s injuries.”

and with that, his whole face reddens instead, mouth snapping shut, his thumbs digging into the waistband of his pants as he tries to tuck his hands somewhere inconspicuous. seems as though the assumption levi drew earlier was correct; he _did_ feel as though he was to blame for the missing limb.

“yes, sir,” eren says back, head dipped. all the fight he’d had just a moment before rushes out again, leaving him deflated. 

levi tries to keep his mouth straight, but the kid looks defeated enough to evoke… well, pity, mostly. 

_damn it_. a long, tired sigh hisses through his teeth.

“come on,” he says finally, groaning, watching as eren’s ears practically prick back up at the acknowledgement. “i’ll walk you.”

—

an hour and a half later, levi sits, watches erwin’s chest rise and fall. he’s supposed to be writing, he reminds himself, eyelids drooping. his gaze flickers to the stump, dark pools of blood forming under the wraps. in the morning, he’ll change them, will let himself leave for ten minutes to wash, change into new clothes before returning to the chair he’s in now. the medics will come in sometime around midday, check his vitals, and leave, the same way they do for every other soldier who comes home injured. erwin isn't special to them, nor would he want to be.

he reaches a hand out, brushes the hair from erwin’s face. and then, almost impulsively, he shifts erwin's body to the side, climbs in next to him and twines their legs together. he knows he won't rest well this way, but the thudding of his heart under levi's ear is enough for him to dismiss that qualm. there are things more important than sleep.

two floors below, eren downs another drink, and stammers "he's _charismatic,_ under the act he puts up!" 

jean laughs harder than he should, and asks, “have you met him?”

**Author's Note:**

> guess who got covid and also is probably suing their university. you'd think this would give me more time to write, but actually i've just been seething in my office chair doing nothing. oh well.
> 
> i got a cat too so that part is nice. her name is honeybee, she is a baby and is being weaned still! but it's been busy. this isn't how I usually write, but uh,,,, oh well. there's a million versions of the "after his arm" stories, but.. eh. who cares. this one's mine. and i like it :)
> 
> anyways if you think this is too ereri-centric, i recommend reading it a second time thats all


End file.
